


family means nobody gets left behind

by Astronomical_Aphrodite



Series: maybe by next January [3]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Good Sibling Diego Hargreeves, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Pre-Relationship, Protective Siblings, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-19 09:10:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22208599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astronomical_Aphrodite/pseuds/Astronomical_Aphrodite
Summary: After Cha Cha and Hazel shot up the mansion, Diego went on a search for his brother, and it’s a good thing he did.—First chapter will take place during the time between chapters seven and eight of ‘new year, new me’, while chapter two will be chapter eight and the beginning of chapter nine. Can be read as a stand alone, although some things won’t make sense.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Eudora Patch, Diego Hargreeves & Klaus Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves/Eudora Patch (implied)
Series: maybe by next January [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1576477
Comments: 7
Kudos: 150





	family means nobody gets left behind

“Alright,” Diego murmured, guiding their mother down the red staircase as she clung tightly to his sleeve, “we’ll all b-be okay now, mom.”

“Thank you, Diego,” she said, smiling at him proudly.

After nearly fifteen minutes searching, he’d found her in their father’s office, crouched underneath the desk while on the line with the police. Hazel and Cha Cha were already gone, and he felt confident enough in his detective skills that he was certain he could track them himself, but it didn’t hurt that Eudora and Beeman would be arriving soon. The rest of his family, besides Luther and Klaus, were gathered in the living room, while Five had teleported home and been shocked by the chaos that had happened in his absence. Mom was the last vulnerable one missing, and now that he found her, they could do damage control on the situation.

Settling her down next to Allison on the couch, he stretched out his sore back, knowing that he’d be bruised all over the next day. They’d all taken quite the beating, although Luther admittedly had it the worst, having a chandelier dropped over his head. He’d already screamed his head off at Five, seeing as he’d promised Diego that there wouldn’t be anybody coming after him, but they were all safe, and that was what mattered. There was an itch in the back of his mind, a voice saying that there was something he was _missing_ , but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He knew that there was something off, but he also knew that he was stressed, and it was probably just adrenaline still running its course, making his body believe there was still danger. It couldn’t have been Klaus, either — their brother was wily and smart enough to escape clear and present danger. He wasn’t particularly worried, trusting in his competence.

“Mom,” his sister sighed in relief, wrapping their mother in an embrace that she eagerly returned. They held each other for a moment until their mother peeled back, and Vanya walked up to her to give her a hug as well. Five stood back, still not one for physical affection, but his expression was relieved. “We were afraid something happened to you,” Allison confessed, but she shook her head.

“I decided it would be better to call for assistance than interfere,” she explained, looking towards Diego, “so I was safe during the attack. Diego came and found me in your father’s office.”

“That’s a relief,” Vanya muttered. Her forehead had stopped bleeding, and when she’d taken her compress off of the injury, it wasn’t as bad as they’d initially thought. Head wounds tended to bleed more, and the actual wound was just a long, thin scratch, although it had been deep. “Who were those people?” She asked, and Five stepped forwards.

“Commission agents,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. He was right to be embarrassed, seeing as it was his mistake that led them there. “I should have been more careful about covering my tracks,” he admitted, “but there were two witnesses at the doughnut shop they shot up a couple nights ago, and one of them must have told them something.”

“Fantastic,” Allison said, rolling her eyes, “so now we’ve got time-traveling secret agents after us?”

“After me, actually,” Five corrected, “but essentially, yes.”

There was pounding at the door, and he knew who it was immediately. Quickly walking to the door, he swung it open, being faced by Eudora Patch and a dozen other officers and forensic investigators. “Patch,” he said in greeting, and she smiled tightly. Stepping back to allow them inside, he lifted his hand in an inviting gesture, gesturing towards the living room. Several cops spread out to look for evidence, while he guided Eudora, Beeman, and several others to the livingroom for what he hoped wouldn’t be a long questioning.

“I’m going to search for Klaus,” he said to Eudora, and she nodded.

While he trusted Klaus’ ability to avoid trouble, he also wanted to satisfy the paranoid part of him that still wanted to ensure his safety. He was Klaus’ emergency contact, but even he stopped caring after the fiftieth overdose. Every hospital visit and rehab stint from Ben’s funeral to about a year before Reginald’s, he was there. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that Klaus wasn’t ready to change, and likely never would be, and for his own mental health he stopped coming to help him, although he kept an ear out for dead addicts on the police scanner, and with every one found, he feared the worst for their wayward brother.

But he had gotten better. Against all odds, something had happened in the last month that made Klaus want to get sober, and he had, his sobriety somehow extending even past his latest rehabilitation center stay. It made him so enormously happy and proud that his brother was taking steps to manage his grief and trauma in a manageable way.

Even if he’d never known the full extent of what Klaus’ training was, he knew that it was the kind of horrible that made him keep the rest of them up at night with his screaming, and eventually made Reginald force Ben to share a bed with him to stop the night terrors. When they were little, four or five, he didn’t remember Klaus even seeing any ghosts, let alone talking about them frequently. Then he’d gotten sick, sick enough that Reginald had to keep him isolated like Vanya had been, and his powers had manifested in full. He always assumed that he got close enough to death himself that it jumpstarted his abilities. The Klaus they knew after his illness but before drugs was one of constant fear, dark circles under his eyes, and social seclusion. Despite Vanya being the family outcast due to her powerlessness, Klaus at the time had been the one none of them wanted to talk to — they could barely comprehend death, let alone deal with a brother that constantly reminded them of human frailty.

But the time period when Klaus was only self-medicating with Benadryl and cannabis was probably the best he’d ever seen him, full of bright smiles and glossy hair, confidence that radiated from him like he was the sun itself and he knew it. He’d been forced into training by Reginald, who didn’t understand how he was suddenly resisting using his abilities until they were sixteen and he had discovered him smoking weed in his bedroom. It had been hell after that for Klaus, with extra training, constant supervision, and being severed from Ben, who was forced into a different bedroom.

Then he’d run away a year later, and Ben died, only crying out for Klaus in his last moments even with the rest of them present, and none of them had looked at Luther the same way again. Klaus’d come back for the funeral without an invitation, having become hooked on cocaine and the harder shit with his sudden homelessness, and simply sat next to the casket crying, refusing to move even when the funeral procession had started. Reginald had threatened him, of course, demanded he either return to the Academy or leave, and he’d left before Ben was even put in the ground.

He freely admitted that it was Vanya and Klaus who had born the brunt of Reginald’s ire, while Luther got to know of his favorite spots and be constantly praised for his attentiveness, even if the only thing he had going for him besides his obedience was enhanced strength and durability. But while Vanya took it out on the rest of them, Klaus took it out on himself, and it backfired on all of the. He found himself wondering sometimes if Klaus could ever see Ben, but before, he figured he was too high to summon him, and Ben wouldn’t likely want to communicate with him anyways. Now, he was curious about whether they’d been able to talk with each other. For all he knew, Ben could be the reason for his sudden sobriety.

As he wandered through the hallways of the house, searching for Klaus, he tried to search the places he figured Klaus would hide in an emergency — under his bed, his armoire, the fire escape — but to no avail. He grew increasingly concerned, and by the time he’d searched the last room in the southeast wing of the mansion, he was nearly panicking. He had to be somewhere, but he was nowhere, and the thought that something could have happened to him made his stomach twist in anxious knots.

His fears were confirmed when he found a bloodied headset and iPod on the carpet. There was red fluid smeared across the carpet and splattered on the walls in a fine, misty arch that he recognized was from a hard object colliding with a fleshy one. The electronics were obviously Klaus, considering that he listened to music when he wasn’t high to ignore the voices of the dead, but he tried and failed to pretend they were somebody else’s.

Quickly, he grabbed them and headed back downstairs, ignoring his brother’s blood smearing on his hand from the headset. Tossing the device and iPod onto the table, they clattered loudly against the surface, startling his siblings. Blood smeared across its surface from the devices, and they stared in abject horror. They all knew what it meant — that their brother had at least been assaulted, and likely had been taken or killed by the people who had been trying to find Five.

“Shit,” Five cursed, disappearing with a flash of blue light. Diego hoped for his sake that he was leaving to find Klaus — if he found out later that he had fucked off to do something about the apocalypse rather than helping him, he didn’t care that he still looked thirteen.

“Allison, Vanya,” he barked harshly, “search the h-house with mom, see if Klaus hiding s-s-somewhere.” The stutter had come back, like it always did when he was stressed, but he pushed through it. Turning, he grabbed Eudora by the shoulder, and she came with him willingly, following him as he moved towards the exit. “Beeman, can you file a m-missing persons report?” He asked, voice strained.

“Yeah,” the detective said, face pale, “I’ll go do that.”

He hopped into Eudora’s police cruiser, and combed his fingers roughly through his hair, trying to understand how he could’ve possibly thought Klaus, his brother, was okay, even when all the signs pointed towards otherwise. Eudora slipped into the driver’s seat next to him, sticking her key in the ignition and turning it, the car coming to life before lurching forwards as they started down the road. She turned the sirens on, weaving skillfully between other cars as they made their way towards.

“It’s not your fault, Diego,” she tried to assure him, but he shook his head.

“He can’t d-defend himself,” he said, voice strained. Klaus had always been sensitive, and there was a reason he hardly participated in missions. He couldn’t handle stress without being drugged out of his mind, and with how hard he had been trying to get sober, Diego didn’t want getting kidnapped to set him back. “I s-should’ve been- been better,” he said, “should’ve made sure he was safe while t-they were still in the house, or f-f-followed after them.”

“Listen,” she said, reaching over the center console and grasping his hand, lacing her fingers with his, “we’ll search every hotel, rest stop, and abandoned building in the city, while Beeman gets the force out looking for him. These criminals are dangerous, they’ve already killed people, so they’re high priority anyways.” He nodded slowly, looking out the window. It was unlikely that he’d see them from the car, but if he missed them, well. “All of you Hargreeves siblings are tough,” she continued, “so I’m certain that he’ll be fine, Diego, so long as we just keep calm and continue looking for him.”

She was right, Diego thought reluctantly. He should be giving his brother more credit, although it still scared the shit out of him to think about Klaus, alone and terrified, held captive by two psychopaths. If he got his hands on either of them, he was a little afraid of what he might do to them. “You’re right,” he said, looking towards her. Their eyes met before Eudora was looking back towards the road, and he blushed, looking away. She kept one hand on the steering wheel, the other not leaving his. He didn’t try pulling away. Instead, he shifted in his seat, absentmindedly fiddling with the knives on his leather holster and trying to keep from thinking too hard about what they could be doing to his brother. “Where to f-first?” He asked gruffly.

“The Holiday Inn up north,” she answered, and he nodded. It would be a long day, but it would be worth it to find him again before anything happened. As the sun rose, he hoped they weren’t already too late. “Beeman will call us if they come up with anything at the station.”


End file.
